Solid
What is Solid?
Solid (derived from “social linked data”) is a platform, a set of standards, a specification meant to empower us to store our data securely in decentralized way. It is a modular and extensible solution based on Linked Data principles and relying as much as possible on existing W3C standards and protocols.
With Solid, because applications are decoupled from the data they produce, users will be able to avoid vendor lock-in by seamlessly switching the apps and personal data storage servers, without losing any data or social connections. Solid will also allow developers to create and improve apps by reusing existing data that was previously created through other applications.
Started as a research project at MIT by Sir Tim-Berners Lee, Solid aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy.
How Is Solid Developed?
Solid is being developed as a set of conventions and tools that will allow the creation of decentralized social applications where data will be decoupled from the application itself, meaning that we, as users will be free to to choose where our data resides and who is allowed to access it.
It is the company Inrupt that is building technology to drive the next era of the web, inspired by the original vision of the inventor of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
The technological promise of Solid is the separation of data from apps. We want to reuse data in any app where it makes sense, regardless of which app first captured that data. This independence unlocks the unprecedented creativity and innovation that Solid is all about: apps don’t need to collect your data (again) before they can make your data work for you. And the way to make our data work, is to make it seamlessly interoperable with different apps.
Ruben Verborgh in Let’s talk about pods
The way out of the siloed and locked by apps data, is possible through the so called Solid Pods.
A Solid Pod At a Glance
Solid pods allow us to manage content, and most importantly the data underlying it, freely, unobstructed by proprietary formats, difficulties with transferring content from one place to another, or the need to give away our privacy and the ownership of our data.
In Solid, each user stores their data in an online storage space that we call a personal online datastore (pod). Pods are Webaccessible storage services, which can either be deployed on personal servers by the users themselves, or on public servers by pod providers similar to current cloud storage providers (e.g., Dropbox).
cit. Solid: A Platform for Decentralized Social
Applications Based on Linked Data
Solid Pods and Personal Linked Data Graphs
In 2021, Ruben Verborgh, a professor at the Decentralized Web technology at IDLab, Ghent University – imec, and a technology advocate for Inrupt, supporting the Solid ecosystem, gave a presentation on how Solid pods are closely related to managing linked data.
Solid In Action
The idea behind Solid is both simple and extraordinarily powerful. Your data lives in a pod that is controlled by you. Data generated by your things — your computer, your phone, your IoT whatever — is written to your pod. You authorize granular access to that pod to whoever you want for whatever reason you want. Your data is no longer in a bazillion places on the Internet, controlled by you-have-no-idea-who. It’s yours. If you want your insurance company to have access to your fitness data, you grant it through your pod. If you want your friends to have access to your vacation photos, you grant it through your pod. If you want your thermostat to share data with your air conditioner, you give both of them access through your pod.
Source: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid and Me, Me by Brice Schneier
Solid for Day To Day Tasks
The following Solid applicationa, as featured in Solid: A Platform for Decentralized Social Applications Based on Linked Data are (update: some of these apps are not available anymore) :
- contacts Manage a list of contacts http://mzereba.github.io/contacts
- cimba Microblogging (cf. Twitter) http://cimba.co
- calendar Event manager http://mzereba.github.io/calendar
- scheduler Meeting scheduler (cf. Doodle) http://mzereba.github.io/scheduler
- dokieli Decentralized authoring https://dokie.li
- profile-editor View and update a user’s profile http://linkeddata.github.io/profile-editor
- warp Solid file browser http://linkeddata.github.io/warp
- zagel Instant messaging/group chat https://solid.github.io/solid-zagel
- inbox Inbox app to process notifications https://solid.github.io/solid-inbox
- Use.id by Digita
- timeline decentralized social network http://solid-social.github.io/timeline
- shamblokus Strategy game (cf. Blokus) http://deiu.github.io/Shamblokus
An updated list of apps sorted by their application area is available at: https://solidproject.org/apps
Some include:
Media Kraken – used to track your media
Penny – A general Pod Browser
Liqid Chat – allows you to store your messages
Solid File Manager – A Solid app that help you manages files in your Pod.
graphMetrix – Allows you to browse your Solid Pod offering multiple views of information including overview, graph, doc, gallery and grid as well as easy to use Solid collaboration control and file management.
Solid for Media User’s and Citizen’s Dat
BBC are among the pioneers of developing a product which stores users’ data in Solid Pods and people can only share their data with BBC if they choose to. In this project BBC uses Inrupt’s Solid Server to deliver viewers a personalized but private “watch party” experience.
Flanders are also pioneering the use of a new standard in data protection by investing a EUR 7 million in Solid, working with three of Flanders’ leading universities in a SolidLab Vlaanderen. The project aims to streamline governmental data processes by putting citizens in control of their own data.
Related sources:
Solid: Social Linked Data (MIT research project webpage)
The Solid Project (Official website)
Let’s talk about pods (blog)
Streamlining governmental data processes by putting citizens in control of their own data – Solid (pdf)
TimBerners-Lee, inventor of the Web plots a radical overhaul of his creation (Wired column)
Surfing the Web Layer of Things, Technology and Thoughts: A Dialogue with Ruben Verborgh (interview)
